Classical Music, 24-hours a day, on KPAC 88.3 FM in San Antonio and KTXI 90.1 FM in the Hill Country.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Some light summer reading

Summertime often finds time at the beach or at the pool and extra time to read. What have you been enjoying on your Kindle, iPad, or your "analog" book that you can't set down?

I'd like to recommend a serial online story that is being posted on Dick Strawser's blog, Thoughts on a Train, a parody of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol - his is "The Lost Chord." You can start here for the e-Table of contents.Strawser describes “The Lost Chord,” as:

a Dr. Dick 'Music Appreciation Thriller,' a novel by Dick Strawser that is, simply put, a musical parody of Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol.”And by 'musical,' I don't mean “The Lost Symbol: The Musical,” with songs and dance numbers and lots of tits and feathers: I mean a reworking of the story within acontext of classical music.Mr. Brown's novel, his third in a series of Robert Langdon mysteries, deals with the Masonic Brotherhood and its secrets, especially trying to discover the whereabouts of the “Ancient Mysteries” which, legend has it, are buried somewhere in Washington D.C. and when found will give the finder immense, unheard of powers.My parody of his novel, on the other hand, deals with Musicians – particularly composers who would seem, according to most normal people, something of a select group, a secret society with its own language and rituals and visions – and it deals with the mysteries of creativity and inspiration, among other things. These “old secrets,” handed down by masters of composition to their students over the generations, through the centuries, create a distinct link with the past no matter how new the music.In Brown's original, the clues are found on the Masonic Pyramid. In my parody, they're found on a Mozart Bobble-Head Doll (actually, a headless bobble-head doll).Though there is no legend I know of, I think anyone who's ever wanted tobecome a composer wished at one time there were a magic pill out there,somewhere, that would turn them into The Greatest Living Composer. And that isthe focus of the mystery behind “The Lost Chord.”